Never forget that Kabbalah is easier than what you think.

Learning Kabbalah is a difficult process, though. You have to get used to terms and explanations that are not belonging to your cultural background. You have to deal with writings and philosophical speculations written in a very difficult language. You have to get over the barriers created in centuries of secrecy.

The most difficult part, in my opinion, is to disentagle Kabbalah from the religious context. Kabbalah is not a religion. Kabbalah does not belong to any religion. Kabbalah is a gift given to human beings that has been carried over by Jewish people as a part of their great culture. We have to thank them for this. We have to thank them because they kept this jewel over the centuries.

I do not want to say that Kabbalah is a simple subject, as our lives are not a simple subject. The creation, the world, what is surrounding us is not a simple subject. What I want to say is that, even though Kabbalah is teaching us the beauty of the complexity of the Universe, we do not have to get lost in it.

The first and most important thing that you have to do, is to learn the secrets of the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. You have to recognize them, understand them and learn how to read them. They are the 22 bricks used to build the Universe. They are the perfect expression of Unity made by differentiation. The essence of Kabbalah.

Go over and over them, recognize them in each aspect of your life. Meditate with them, play with them, draw them, paint them. They are 22 keys to understand the reality around you.

Shape, sound and number.

The 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are a very powerful tool that can heal you and make your life happier and more complete.

Tobia Ravà is a great artist who paints the reality using only the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, their shapes and their numerical values. His work is simply amazing. It is the perfect graphical explanation of the beauty of Alef-Beit, the Hebrew Alphabet. The beauty of Kabbalah.

At 14:46 on March 11th, 2011 a massive earthquake has struck Japan.

Following the earthquake, 10 meters high waves have hit the coastline of north-eastern Japan killing thousands of people and destroying everything. Japanese call these waves Tsunami.

I am sure you have seen dozens of pictures and movies of this disaster. I am also sure that you have already sent help.

Please donate again!

Please give something to all the people hit by the earthquake and the following tsunami, as they have lost everything.

Click on this banner and donate.

Thanks.

If you own an iPhone, an iPad, or a Kindle, you can now buy and download an e-book about Kabbalah and Kabbalistic Astrology from here.

You can still read it even if you do not own one of those great toys.

Thanks to Calibre (a free application available for Mac, Windows and Linux), you can read e-books of any format on your computer.

This e-book is a simple way to satisfy your requests for an application, something to have always all the information with you.

I have written new chapters and I have tried to give more information than what is available here on the website.

Something special available only in the e-book.

The result is a guide to Kabbalah and Kabbalistic Astrology that (I really hope) is easy to understand for everybody.

I will never stop repeating myself: Kabbalah is such an amazing thing but, unfortunately, Kabbalists tend to make it appear very complicated. They love to show-off, we love to show-off. Unfortunately, this problem make Kabbalah a tough thing for simple people, but I strongly believe that Kabbalah has to be understood by as many people as possible. This is the reason why I am trying to keep things simple.

Getting back to the e-book, it is the first one of a few I am working on.

I am also working with Daniela Abravanel to have her books available as e-books on this website. Be patient.

For the time being you have to make do with The Secrets of Your Birthday.

Enjoy reading!

I have had the great chance to meet Daniela Abravanel.

Daniela is a Tzaddiq. Her knowledge of Kabbalah is impressive. She has been studying it for the past 30 years after a long journey through Induism, Tibetan Buddhism and Shamanism.

Her experience and knowledge of the different disciplines allows her to point out the many parallelisms between them. Something that I always try to emphasize.

We have talked for hours about Kabbalah, the 22 Letters and their power. Daniela has been teaching the healing properties of the Alef-Beit and has a deep and clear vision about them.

She is working on some very interesting projects to spread the beauty of Kabbalah. One of them aims to let people have an experience of Kabbalah in the places where everything has started. She is, in fact, organizing a 10 days trip to Qumran, the land of Essenes.

During this trip, she will teach some amazing meditation techniques learned over these years. It is a great idea and I really wish I could go and enjoy the wisdom of Daniela in those great places, so deeply connected with the Kabbalistic tradition.

This morning, a very nice lady asked me if I really believed in the power of the 72 Names of God. “Are you serious?” she asked. “I am” was my answer.

I have been working on the database that will be the backbone for the pages that will teach you about this amazing topic. It is one of the most fascinating parts of the whole Kabbalah.

The 72 Names of God are also known as Shemhamphorash or Shemhamphorasch, that are two corruptions of the Hebrew words Shem ha-Mephorash, a term with a different meaning.

I am sure that many of you remember the tattoo on Madonna’s shoulder clearly visible in the “Die Another Day” music video. This tattoo shows one of the 72 Names of God: the 11th (לאו) which is said, among other things, to protect artists and to help them reach fame.

The 72 Names of God are pure and perfect Energies that can help us in achieving virtues and qualities. Beware that They can also emphasize flaws if They are not handled in the correct way.

I haven’t vanished.

Things are going on behind the scenes and, in the meantime, I have started to give Breathing and Meditation classes to a very nice group of ladies and gentlemen. Meditation for “busy people”.

One of the meditations that I have been teaching them is based on the 3 mother letters: Mem, Alef and Shin. These letters are extremely powerful. I always recommend to start with the Mem, a letter with unbelievable healing powers.

Allow me to tell you a story: one of my students was affected by amenorrhoea. I suggested her to focus on the Mem. Visualize the letter at the center of her belly and repeat it while exhaling, as a mantra. She did it and, furthermore, she has also decided to have a new tattoo: a beautiful Mem on her belly.

A few weeks later her period came back and, now, everything is back to normal.

You can also try to meditate using the Alef: visualize it in your chest and emit it as a Mantra. This should help you balancing your feelings and give you a better love life.

Shin is a bit more tricky. Better not use it for the time being and by yourself.

As you may have understood, the making of this site is an activity I usually perform during weekends and nights.

I have not been posting new pages for more than 10 days but, in the meantime, a few things have been going on behind the curtains.

Etz Haim is now hosted in a new server. All the images and the relevant files are, then, synchronized on CDNs in order to have a faster page load and improve the accessibility to people that do not own an high-speed Internet access.

I strongly believe that the effectiveness of a website is to give people the information they want in a quick and easy way.

I really hope that all the work that I have done in the past 10 days will improve your experience here at Etz Haim. In this way you may be able to concentrate more in the learning of Kabbalah and enjoy it.

Kabbalah is an unbelievable system of thought that can transform your lives and guide you towards happiness but, unfortunately, the complexity of the codes and their interconnections with the Jewish religion have made the study of Kabbalah a difficult thing to approach.

I still find myself amazed by the love for complexity of many Kabbalists. Isn’t this a way to keep people far away from Kabbalah?

I have finally finished to post 12 pages about the signs of the Zodiac.

Each page contains a brief description of the sign, the Hebrew letter corresponding to it, the glyph, the image of the letter and a video.

I really hope that you will like it. Kabbalistic Astrology is a very serious issue to me. Thanks to it, I have learned a lot about myself. I could work on improving some aspects of my personality attempting to escape from the “yoke of the planets”. I have tried to make it understandable and simple, reducing digressions and circumlocutions typical of Kabbalists.

Do not forget that your Astrological Sign is only 1 out of 32 aspects of your Kabbalistic Horoscope. It is only the position of the Sun at the moment of your birth. Very important but just a little part of the personality of your incarnation.

Good night.

Here I start again to post new pages. The first 4 signs of the Zodiac are online and each one of them has its own page with its own video.

I am planning to finish all the 12 signs of the Zodiac within next Monday and I will do my best to make it.

In the meantime, you can still watch all the videos in the page dedicated to Kabbalistic Astrology, I will keep them there as long as I do not finish to post the remaining pages. Original idea is to have a better introduction to the relation between Astrology and Kabbalah, the Kabbalistic Horoscope and its meanings. In fact, a Kabbalistic Horoscope is completely different from any other Horoscope you may have. I strongly believe that Astrology is not supposed to reveal the future but to teach us how to become a better and happier human being.

Making a Kabbalistic Horoscope is a very long process which may take up to a couple of days, depending on its complexity but, believe me, once done it is amazing. The details about one’s personality, one’s body and one’s destiny are really impressive. It took me more than 8 years of study before being able to make one.

Therefore, keep on coming and checking about new pages and new posts and you will start learning the codes.

Making this site is a continuous adventure. I have been struggling with the dark side of technology in order to have a website fully compatible with the latest mobile devices: iPad, iPhone and Android. Compatibility issues were mainly related to the visualization of Hebrew and videos.

Finally, I have finished the revision of the code and, as from today, this website is compatible with all the major browsers and all the most advanced mobile devices.

It has taken me a few days and I have still to make a few minor changes in the page dedicated to the 12 astrological signs but, since I have learned quite a lot of tricks, I will be able to finish everything during this weekend.

In the meantime, I have also worked on issues related to the visibility of this site through search engines and directories such as Technorati. But, everything is depending on you that are reading this post. If you do not find this site interesting, please let me know. If you want to know more about some subjects, please drop me a line. I will try to satisfy your requests within the limits of my knowledge.